"Whenever two or more individuals come together and influence one another,…

Sociologists distinguish a social group from a mere aggregate of people by one criterion: interaction. A social group is standardly defined (for example, by Ogburn and Nimkoff) as two or more persons who interact with one another such that each one's behaviour influences, and is influenced by, the others — no further condition, such as permanence or formal roles, is needed for this basic definitional test.

The stem's wording — "two or more individuals come together and influence one another" — restates this exact criterion: coming together is interaction, and influencing one another is mutual influence. Since the accepted definition treats interaction plus mutual influence as both necessary and sufficient to call a collection of people a social group, the statement is accurate as given.

• "Partially true" would require an added condition — such as a shared purpose or lasting structure — beyond interaction and mutual influence; the classical definition sets no such extra bar.

• "Hardly true" would require treating the described interaction as too fleeting or incidental to count, but the stem describes active, mutual influence, not a chance encounter.

• "False" would require rejecting interaction and mutual influence as a defining criterion altogether, contrary to the standard sociological definition.

A set of unrelated strangers momentarily sharing a bus stop, none of whom interact with or influence one another, remains a mere aggregate rather than a group — precisely because the interaction condition is absent. This contrast confirms that interaction plus mutual influence is the operative test, and that the statement in the stem fully satisfies it.

The statement is True: coming together and influencing one another is precisely the accepted definitional criterion for a social group.